OUT OF BOUNDS By Geary (Smedley) Leason

(Note: This column appeared in the FFB News on Aug. 28, 2002.)
For countless centuries the world has suffered immeasurably trying to conform to a faulty standard for the human figure. This bogus yardstick sets as its ideal a hard body with muscular contours. Washboard abs for men and hourglass figures women (36-26-36) epitomize this model. If achieving this ideal only required minute adjustments to our behavior, it probably wouldn’t be any more bothersome than getting a driver’s license. But, regrettably, conforming to this fraudulent standard, which is absolutely contrary to the Maker’s Original Design, has caused Mankind more pain and grief than the total of all the other agony he has experienced after he (and she) was bounced out of The Garden way back when.
What follows is only a few of the woes Mankind has suffered in his attempts to put his round peg body into Satan’s hard body square hole:
Torture from Body Shapers -Girdles, corsets, breast binders, foot bounders, and metal neck stretchers are just a few of the thousands of body-shaping devices Man has painfully squeezed himself into. 99% of the time these devices fail in their purpose; but even when they do succeed, the user either croaks from crushed organs or asphyxiation. “O What Pain We Needlessly Suffer!”
Self Starvatio-It is one thing when a famine hits and people agonizingly starve to death; it is quite another when they do it to themselves in order to conform to some unrealistic and fantastical image they have had imprinted in their minds. Asking, “Please pass the Brussels Sprouts, Turnips, and Beets,” while the platter with the sizzling Sirloin steak sits ignored, makes a mockery out the essence of human existence. If delicious food cannot be enjoyed and that grass, animal innards, and tofu must be choked down, what’s the point of being here anyway? Did not God give us the Bagel, the Root Beer Float, the Doughnut, and The Cheeseburger? And did He not declare these “to be Yummy, very Yummy! Go Forth and Multiply Youself!”
Waste of Money- If I had one nickel for every can of SlimFast consumed in a futile effort to lose weight, I could feed the entire continent of Africa for a year. If I had one penny for each dollar spent on Weight Watchers, Jenny Craig, and other special diet foods – I could feed both Bangladesh and India for ten years. Give me one dime for each pound that has been regained following diets, and I could retire the National Debt tomorrow.
Low Self Esteem- Perhaps the most devastating effect arising from adhering to the spurious muscular, low fat standard, is the shattering of one’s self-esteem that occurs when he compares his soft, round body to the counterfeit hard body ideal. The world says, “Fat is Ugly” and we swallow this lie all the way down past our large colon. We are always feeling some bulge, some roll, some flab on our bodies wishing that these parts of us would go away. And pity those who are so “over-rounded,” they sometimes wish that their entire carcasses be gone.
And since more than 60% of the US was recently declared by the CDC to be overweight and/or obese, we now have 180 million unhappy, homely, gross people waddling up and down the highways and byways of our land. But this should not be! Our Creator did not intend for us to live in shame over the way we look. MANKIND NEEDS TO BE REEDUCATED TO THE WISDOM AND JOY OF THE CREATOR’S ORIGINAL DESIGN!
Next week, this column will expound on the many excellent benefits of the Creator’s Original Design (Round Is Right!) and also provide a helpful chart to guide the reader. So get your significant other to trot out to the mailbox next Wednesday to retrieve the FFB News, so that you can feel so much better about yourself after reading Out of Bounds once more. In the meantime, keep on rollin.’